


Safe

by fabrega



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Era, Cockblocking, M/M, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-07 08:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10356327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: Jesse pokes an accusatory finger into Reaper's chest. "What business is it of yours who I'm sleeping with, anyway?"





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/gifts).



> McReyes Spring Break, Day 2: Growth/Change
> 
> For [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/), who I still can't believe actually encouraged this.

It's not until Jesse and the white guy he picked up at the bar--whose name Jesse didn't bother to get but who is probably called something like Bradley or Chad--get back to his cheap motel room that he realizes he probably should have been more up-front about this whole endeavor.

"Wow," Chadley says dryly, looking at the assortment of weapons and body armor Jesse has laid out on the motel room bed, "I didn't realize that this much violence was on the table tonight."

"I...can explain."

"I'm looking forward to it," Chadley says. He takes a seat on the bed next to all the gear and looks up at Jesse, waiting.

Jesse takes a moment to try to compose his thoughts.

***

The first time after the fall of Overwatch that Jesse attempts to get back in the game, as it were, he picks up some guy who smiles at him in a bar in a little town in Arizona and brings the guy back to the cheap motel where he's staying under an assumed name. (Dark eyes, a nose just so, and a smile that looks like it's just for him; Jesse tries very hard not to think about it too much.) The guy pushes him up against the wall, nipping at Jesse's neck while his fingers work on the buttons on the front of Jesse's shirt.

"Is that your gun, cowboy, or are you just happy to see me?" he murmurs slyly against Jesse's neck.

"Little of both, darlin'," Jesse says. His grin falters as the endearment comes out of his mouth, and he feels a flash of relief as he realizes that the guy is looking down at his shirt and not up at his face.

The relief is short-lived, though, as the guy pulls on the chain Jesse wears under his shirt and holds up the dog tags attached to it. "What are these?"

(They belong to Gabriel Reyes. Maybe someday he will be ready to take them off; part of him hopes a little that he never will.)

"Nothing--" _important_ , Jesse almost lies, but he can't bring himself to say that, even if he doesn't mean it, "--that you need to worry about. I think you'll find that my dick is a little bit lower than that."

The guy smirks and goes for Jesse's belt, and that's when the ruckus starts in the parking lot.

In Jesse's defense, he and the guy both stop what they're doing to peer out the window at the commotion, where they see a dark figure in a black coat who seems to be menacing people in the parking lot and making its way towards the motel lobby. The guy probably doesn't expect Jesse to swear, grab his hat, and barge out the door, though, buttoning up his shirt as he goes. Somebody has to do something; justice ain't gonna dispense itself.

He confronts the figure in the lobby, a man in a long, dark coat and a bone-white mask. He's holding two shotguns--neither aimed at Jesse, oddly--and his voice, when he speaks, is low, ominous, a little unearthly.

"Hold it right there, partner," Jesse says, gun drawn, vaguely aware that he's mismatched his buttons and is showing a little bit of skin above his belt, probably not making the best first impression.

The man laughs, and then dissolves into thick black smoke. The smoke twists very deliberately around Jesse several times and then swirls away into the night. Jesse's left in the motel lobby, now aiming his gun at the terrified clerk behind the front desk.

He swears again, apologizes, and dashes for his room. The guy's not there, but luckily Jesse's travel bag appears to be untouched, and Jesse grabs it and makes a run for it, hopping on the next train out of town.

It takes him another few months to work up the courage to try again. Jesse's not sure the universe gives people signs, but if it did, what happened in Arizona would be a pretty clear red flag. Unbelievably, when he tries again, the same exact thing happens. It's a different guy from a different bar, somewhere in one of the Carolinas this time, but the timeline is the same: Jesse and the guy make it back to Jesse's cheap motel and don't quite make it to the main event before the peace is disturbed. 

This time, Jesse actually fires a shot, and it strikes the lobby wall behind the mysterious man as he goes incorporeal. The smoke envelops Jesse this time, and he feels--cold, and anger, and, strangely, safe. 

...that seems like an unlikely side-effect to the smoke; then again, Jesse reasons, a victim who feels safe is less likely to struggle, and a victim who's struggling less is surely easier to kill. Who knows what all tricks this mysterious man has up his sleeve.

Jesse's on the next train out of town.

A month later, four states away, there's a guy in his motel room and a fracas outside and Jesse heaves a sigh. He opens the motel room door and stares down the figure in black in the middle of the parking lot.

"What the hell do you want from me?" he yells at the man. The man does not respond, just does a straight-up cartoon villain laugh, complete with the head thrown back and the dramatically-curled fingers.

Behind Jesse, the guy he'd brought back from the bar gives a disbelieving snort. "Sorry, handsome," he says to Jesse, pulling his shirt back on, "Nothing you can do to me tonight is worth getting involved in whatever's happening here." Then he slips out of the room, past Jesse, out into the dark anonymity of the whichever-state-they're-in night. The man sees the guy go, stops laughing maniacally and walks closer to Jesse's first-floor room.

"That was a serious question, friend," Jesse says as the man approaches. "What the hell do you want from me? Because this needs to stop. It's not funny."

" _I_ think it's pretty funny," the man says. Jesse's struck by how, even though the man's face isn't visible behind his mask, he can still tell that he's smiling.

Then the man turns to smoke again, circles Jesse-- _safe_ , every cell in Jesse's body says, _safe_ \--and then he is off into the night.

***

Jesse tries to figure out a good way to say _I am using you as bait_ , because he is, he's using Chadley as bait.

After the last encounter with the man who's been chasing him across the country to, for lack of a better word, cock-block him, he'd called in a number of favors. Turns out, the man in black is called the Reaper, and he's been chasing down and killing Overwatch agents. That being the case, Jesse's not sure why or how he's managed so many run-ins with the man and come away alive.

Yet here he is, trying to arrange one more.

"Now that I think about it, I'm not actually sure I can explain," Jesse says.

Chadley looks thoughtful, then shrugs. "So you want to clear all the gear off the bed, or do we fuck on top of it?"

Jesse squints at Chadley suspiciously. "Anybody ever tell you that your self-preservation instinct might need a little recalibrating?"

"Look," Chadley says, shrugging again, giving Jesse what he probably thinks is a sly smile, "I came up here ready for you to murder me with your dick, and I mean, as long as there's still some murder involved--"

Jesse cuts him off. "No, nope, we're done here." He sighs. "Look, uh, Brad?"

"It's Chad."

Huh, he'd been close. "Look, Chad, there's a--I'm pretty sure that there's a guy on his way here with the intention of making tonight very difficult for me, and it would be best if you weren't here when he got here."

Chad nods seriously. "Oh, I understand. Ex-flame, right?"

"What?! No." Jesse is suddenly acutely aware of the weight of the dog tags hanging under his shirt. "It's not--please, just leave. If you go now, there's plenty of time for you to make it back to the bar and find some other, less-complicated hookup."

"This seems fun, though!"

Jesse takes a deep breath, counts backwards in his head, lets it out again.

"Okay, _fine_ ," Chad says, before Jesse even gets a chance to argue with him. "But if I leave now, don't I risk running into this...this guy?"

Jesse gestures at the window opposite the door, and Chad crosses the room to look out it.

"A fire escape?"

Jesse nods. "Picked this place special for it. Ought to get you out of here free and clear."

"Well! It's been...I'd say 'fun', but I'm pretty sure I'm leaving before the fun actually starts, and you're making me climb down a two-story fire escape, so that's probably not the right word. It's been a thing, cowboy. I hope that--"

The rest of Chad's sentence is lost in the commotion outside. Jesse motions at Chad and the window, then quickly straps himself into the tac gear he'd used the rest of his called-in favors for and throws open the door. "Up here!" he shouts at the man in the middle of the parking lot, and Reaper turns, strides towards him. Jesse doesn't take his eyes off Reaper or his hand off his holster.

"Reaper," Jesse says as he approaches the door.

Reaper tilts his head in acknowledgment. "Jesse."

"Ain't had anybody call me that for years."

"Seems a shame," Reaper says, and Jesse's brow furrows. What does _that_ mean?

Reaper's face tips down, and he gestures at Jesse's gun. "You haven't shot me yet."

Jesse shrugs. "Hasn't seemed to work the last couple times I tried. Besides, we're talking, peaceable-like. Lotta reasons to be annoyed with you, sure, but nothing fatal so far." He huffs a laugh. " _You_ haven't swooped off into the night yet."

"Neither has he," Reaper says, nodding at something behind Jesse, and Jesse turns to see Chad kneeling on the fire escape, his head poking back through the window.

Jesse facepalms. "Chad! What did I tell you?!"

"I know, I know, but this is way more interesting than anything that has ever happened at that bar--"

Jesse crosses the room, closes the window, and pulls the curtains shut with more force than he probably needs.

"Him? Really?"

Jesse's face goes hot with embarrassment. "He wasn't someone I wanted to sleep with, he was _bait_."

_I knew it_ , comes Chad's voice from outside, and then they hear a series of thumping noises that sound suspiciously like somebody accidentally falling down two stories of fire escape. Jesse makes a face and starts to go over to the window to check, but stops after two steps when they hear a faraway voice yell _I'm okay!_

Having...dealt with that, he turns back to Reaper. "What business is it of yours who I'm sleeping with, anyway?" Before he knows what he's doing, Jesse is poking an accusatory finger into Reaper's chest.

Reaper does not answer his question. He glances down at Jesse's finger, which Jesse quickly withdraws. "You know that I'm the Reaper, which means you have to know what I've been doing. But you're here, talking to me, instead of trying to turn me in or kill me. Why?"

Jesse shrugs, a little uneasily. "Wanted some answers, I guess? Not sure I owe Overwatch much of anything, and the way Winston tells it, you could've easily killed him but didn't, means you maybe owe them more than I do. Besides, if killing somebody was enough to make a man a villain, well." He looks down at the floor. "Suppose you'll be leaving now, since my evening has been successfully ruined."

Reaper nods, and then he's smoke, engulfing Jesse. As it overwhelms him, Jesse says aloud: _safe_.

The smoke re-forms, and Reaper is standing very close to him. "What did you say?"

"'Safe'. When you do that, I feel...safe."

Reaper turns on his heel, stalks towards the door, but pauses in the doorway. "Do you still have his dog tags?"

Jesse doesn't answer, because there's no way that Reaper, _of all people_ , can be asking what Jesse thinks he's asking.

"Reyes," Reaper says, an explanation. "Do you still have his dog tags? If you don't have them anymore, I won't need to bother you again."

Jesse pulls them out almost despite himself, lets them dangle as he holds the chain. "Only two people knew I had these: me and him." Reaper takes a step out the door, but Jesse catches his arm. " _Tell me_."

"Jesse," Reaper says, and he doesn't need to say anything else--just from the tone of voice, the inflection, Jesse _knows_. He doesn't know how or why, and he probably shouldn't believe it, but he _knows_. 

He pulls hard on where he's gripping Reaper's arm, dragging him back into the room and into a fierce hug, nudging the door shut behind him. Reaper seems surprised by this action, a little shell-shocked, and he stands with his arms at his side while Jesse squeezes him tight. He's still there, though, solid and huggable, which has to be a good sign.

"I missed you," Reaper says, almost too quietly to hear.

"You should have _told_ me."

"I didn't know how."

"'With words' would've been a good start," Jesse says, finally pulling away, still a little frightened that as soon as he lets go of Reaper that he'll be gone. "Instead you chased me around the country and let me think that I had the world's most dedicated, most ridiculous cock-blocker."

Reaper snorts, but isn't immediately gone like Jesse had feared. "Sombra said--" He pauses. "I shouldn't have listened to Sombra."

"Who's Sombra?"

"She's...a friend. She helped me find myself, after the explosion, and then she helped me find you."

"Guess I can't be too mad, then." Jesse laughs. "Did she suggest this getup too?"

"With a name like the Reaper, how else am I supposed to dress? It's for show, for effect. I mean, mostly--the mask is..." He trails off, looks away. "I'm not..."

Jesse understands what he's not quite saying; everything Jesse's seen of the Reaper, there's no way that he's going to take off the mask and find exactly the man he'd left behind in Blackwatch. "Whatever's under there, it's still Gabe Reyes, right?"

Reaper nods. "As near as I can tell."

Moving slowly, gently, giving Reaper every chance to stop him, Jesse pulls the mask away. The face underneath, mostly the face of Gabe Reyes, gives him a fragile smile, and Jesse can't help but smile back. He reaches up with his left hand, his metal thumb tracing along what's left of a cheekbone.

"I'm not entirely the same man you first loved either," he says, and Reaper-- _Gabe_ \--chuckles, a sound of pure relief. "The universe wants to give you back to me now, I will take you however I can get you, darlin'."

"Even if I chased you across the country to keep you from hooking up with strangers you'd met in bars?"

"It'll be a great story to tell the kids," Jesse says, grinning, and he lets Gabe pull him close.


End file.
